Purple / Orchid Rock Rose Plants
The details
Rock Rose
- Pink flowers, red-purple dots in the centre. June-July
- Evergreen
- Grows on the coast, low windbreak
- Great for containers, rockeries
- Any poor, well drained soil.
- Full sun & shelter.
- Hardiness H4
- To 1m x 1m
- RHS Award of Garden Merit
Recommended extras
Description
Cistus purpureus: Purple Orchid Rock Rose, 2 Litre Pot Grown Plants
A bushy evergreen shrub, quite low and spreading when mature, whose profuse pink flowers have red-purple dots around the centre. Blooms June and July.
Browse our other coastal hedging, or all of our garden shrubs.
Features:
- Pink flowers, red-purple dots in the centre. June-July
- Evergreen
- Grows on the coast, low windbreak
- Great for containers, rockeries
- Any poor, well drained soil.
- Full sun & shelter.
- Hardiness H4
- To 1m x 2m
- RHS Award of Garden Merit
Growing Purple Orchid Rock Roses
These hard scrabble plants only need good drainage from their soil, so they are happy in rockeries and pots with quite poor fertility. Above ground, they want full sun, and although they can be grown as a coastal windbreak, a decent amount of shelter from wind will leave them looking much more attractive. Its hardiness rating of H4 is tough enough for most of the UK, but not recommended for the coldest parts of inland Scotland.
In Your Garden Design
The highly decorative pink flowers with yellow centres and dark brown spots make this a wow choice for any dry Mediterranean scheme. It is ideal for use as a stand-alone plant or, if in a sheltered spot, would look dramatic paired with the funnel-shaped flowers of the evergreen Echium vulgare. Like its cousin Cistus Sunset, it would work well with other sun-worshippers such as Lavandula Melissa Lilac, Salvia May Night or Rose Queen and Scabiosa Blue Note.
Did You Know?
This hybrid of Cistus ladanifer and C. creticus was named in 1786 by the French soldier and naturalist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). Most people reading this were taught at school that Lamarck was wrong about evolution being affected by an organism's life experiences, and Darwin was right about evolution through selection pressures alone.
It wasn't until the 21st century that Darwin's original theory was shown to be mathematically impossible - too slow - without epigenetics: changes to DNA caused by an organism's lifestyle that are passed on. Lamarck laughs last.